North Korean leader Kim Jong-un (C) touring a military unit on an island off the North Korean mainland near the sea border with South Korea in the East Sea. Kim’s younger sister, Yo-jong, is seen behind.
Photograph: KCNA/EPA

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has promoted his younger sister to the secretive country’s powerful politburo, consolidating her position as one of the country’s most influential women.

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Kim Yo-jong has been made an alternate member of the top decision-making body, North Korean state media reported on Sunday. The move indicates that she has replaced their aunt, Kim Kyong-hee, who was a key decision-maker when their father, the former leader Kim Jong-il, was alive.

“It shows that her portfolio and writ is far more substantive than previously believed and it is a further consolidation of the Kim family’s power,” said Michael Madden, a North Korea expert at Johns Hopkins University’s 38 North website.

The personnel changes were announced after a meeting of the country’s central committee of the ruling Workers’ party, during which Kim said his nuclear weapons were a “powerful deterrent” that guaranteed his regime’s sovereignty and helped to counter the “protracted nuclear threats of the US imperialists”.

Kim Jong Sik and Ri Pyong Chol, two of the three men behind Kim’s banned missile programme, were also promoted amid a wider reshuffle and an increasingly tense stand off between Pyongyang and Washington over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions.

Speaking to reporters on Saturday, Donald Trump said “only one thing will work” in dealing with North Korea, after previous administrations had talked to Pyongyang without results. The US president did not make clear to what he was referring, but has previously said the US would “totally destroy” North Korea if necessary to protect itself and its allies.

Officials in Washington have attempted to play down Trump’s opposition to the possibility of talks with North Korea, saying the president and his secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who supports dialogue with Pyongyang, were in agreement on how to deal with the regime.

South Korea’s unification ministry said Kim’s promotions could be an attempt by North Korea to navigate a way through its increasing isolation.

“The large-scale personnel reshuffle reflects that Kim Jong-un is taking the current situation seriously, and that he’s looking for a breakthrough by promoting a new generation of politicians,” the ministry said in a statement.

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Like all members of North Korea’s ruling Kim dynasty, details of Kim Yo-jong’s biography are sketchy. She is believed to be in her late 20s and, like her brother, is thought to have spent time at a boarding school in Switzerland during her youth.

Kim Yo-jong has long been a rising star in North Korea’s power circles and was recently given responsibility for developing the leader’s cult of personality. South Korean media recently reported that she had replaced a veteran propaganda chief and had assumed control of “consolidating Kim Jong-un’s power” by implementing “idolisation projects”.

In 2011, she featured prominently at the state funeral of their father Kim Jong-il. She then remained outside the public spotlight until early 2014, when she re-emerged at her brother’s side during elections to fill the seats in North Korea’s rubber-stamp legislature.

Since then, she has made periodic public appearances alongside Kim Jong-un. Her promotion is seen as a sign that she is trusted, and makes her one of the country’s most powerful women, alongside Kim’s wife, the former entertainer Ri Sol-ju.

In January, the US Treasury blacklisted Kim Yo-jong along with other North Korean officials over the dictatorship’s “severe human rights abuses”. A landmark UN report in 2014 found compelling evidence of torture, execution and arbitrary imprisonment, deliberate starvation and an almost complete lack of free thought and belief in the country.

State media said that Kim’s speech addressing the meeting on Saturday had described the country’s nuclear weapons as a “powerful deterrent firmly safeguarding the peace and security in the Korean peninsula and north-east Asia”.

He said the situation proved that North Korea’s policy of byungjin – the parallel development of nuclear weapons and the economy – was “absolutely right”.

“The national economy has grown on their strength this year, despite the escalating sanctions,” said Kim, referring to UN security council resolutions put in place to curb Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programmes.

In recent weeks, North Korea has launched two missiles over Japan and conducted its sixth nuclear test. It may be fast advancing toward its goal of developing a nuclear-tipped missile capable of hitting the US mainland.

North Korea is preparing to test such a missile, according to a Russian lawmaker who had just returned from a visit to Pyongyang.

North Korean state media, which operates as the regime mouthpiece, announced that several other high ranking cadres were promoted to the central committee over the weekend.

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Foreign minister Ri Yong-ho, who named Trump “President Evil” in a bombastic speech to the UN general assembly last month, was promoted to full vote-carrying member of the politburo.

“Ri can now be safely identified as one of North Korea’s top policymakers,” said Madden. “Even if he has informal or off-the-record meetings, Ri’s interlocutors can be assured that whatever proposals they proffer will be taken directly to the top.”

North Korean leaders have long promoted trusted family members to their inner political power circles, but these positions are precarious. Kim Kyong-hui fell from grace shortly after Kim Jong-un assumed leadership. She is reported to be in hiding after her husband, Jang Song-taek – at one time a close aide to Kim Jong-il – was executed in late 2013 for treason and corruption after being denounced as a “traitor for all ages”.

Two women are currently on trial in Malaysia accused of killing Kim Jong-un’s estranged half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, with a toxic nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur airport earlier this year. The women, one Indonesian and the other Vietnamese, have pleaded not guilty and say they were duped into believing they were playing a harmless prank for a hidden camera show. Four North Korean suspects were allowed to fly home in prisoner exchange.